Silent Prison
by Verity
Summary: Voldemort is dead, and all have to cope with the aftermath. S/H, H/G.
1. Silent Prison

Silent Prison

_by Verity_

She tugs at the strap of her dress – it is slipping down her shoulder again, Mother would poke her in the back if she saw her and say _Straighten up!_ in that tone of voice expressly reserved for a disobedient child. But it's chilly out, so she's hunched over a little and wishing she'd had the sense to bring a shawl. Of course, Mother could never know about this, never would, unless... _Stop fooling yourself. Secrets are the prices we pay for freedom_, she thinks. But this wasn't liberty, not really – a silent prison she was locking herself in. He could never…

She'd always been such a good little girl, she reflects, looking out of one of the Astronomy Tower's wide windows. Then came Harry and Ron and Voldemort… Voldemort who was dead now, never going to come back. Dead by her hand. She had such pretty hands – they were slender porcelain with neatly trimmed, unadorned nails.

A memory of that night comes back to her then, the last time she'd ever seen Ron or Harry. Both had kissed her on the cheek and vanished down their separate paths. It was always her turn to wait at the fork in the road – and she'd broken that promise.

She can still see them, if she wants to; Madam Pomfrey has assured her they'll be waking up any day now. But she doesn't want to have to look into their eyes and tell them what she's done. 

_It's so cold up here._ She wraps her arms around herself. Memory of Voldemort, crying out in agony – she'd been surprised he could feel the pain, she'd thought he was a monster – 

Forgotten, for a moment, that he had once been human, like her. Forgotten until his red, human blood spilled out of him, over the knife and her alabaster hands…

_No! A MONSTER!_ she screams at her inner self. Firmly. She will deny him that humanity; will deny herself the spiraling abyss to follow. 

_Dead by my hands_. And such pretty hands to die by. Would he have known that? Would he have ever looked at her hands? Ever even contemplated them touching him? _No, not her, she's not callous enough, not brave enough, not daring enough, not bright enough…_

"But I was," she whispers, and as she does, a warm cloak drops over shoulders. "Professor Snape," she says, and closes her eyes.

"Severus," he corrects her, gently, which surprises her – there was only the one look between them, a look that could have meant any number of things, as she came out of Voldemort's lair, her white dress soaked with ruby-red blood. He had been there to catch her when she crumpled, dropped the crystal knife to the floor and watched it shatter.

She had been the one to send the note. "I…" she begins, falters. Where does one go from a chance glance one night in the middle of a war?

"I'm not your Professor anymore," Severus says swiftly – which is right, because it was the night of the Leaving Feast that the Order was called together…  She wonders vaguely why she's still at Hogwarts. Then remembers, with a flash of pain, Harry and Ron in the infirmary, and her parents' graves still fresh in the ground… the Death Eaters had no limits, and they had carried out their Master's revenge, even in death. Fitting, really.

"I know." She opens her eyes, turns to him. And he hugs her. No, hugs isn't right – embraces her, and after a minute or so she realizes he is leaning on her as much as she is leaning on him. They all need to support each other. Now.

_Startling, isn't it_, she thinks, _that this is the first anyone's touched you since Harry and Ron?_ Except for Pomfrey, though Pomfrey hadn't really counted. It wasn't those memories that had stayed with her.

Severus must sense something of what she's thinking. "You were within your rights," he whispers in her ear, "To kill him the moment you walked in his door."

"But it was wrong," she whispers back, and after a second he draws back and looks in her face. Then nods. Nodding isn't enough for her. "It was _wrong_!" she cries. "I broke a promise. I broke it… and I killed him." Her voice breaks on the last word.

He flinches, even though she knows he knows this, heard her voice saying _He's dead,_ with heartbreaking serenity as she walked out of the dingy cavern where Voldemort met his end. "And you will have to live with that," Severus tells her, " But death was more than the Dark Lord deserved."

She nods, and then, solemnly, kisses him, because her parents are dead, Voldemort is dead, and she really doesn't know who she is anymore. _But does it matter?_ she asks herself.

She remembers that look, across that room, in the twilight hour; remembers the gleeful look in a monster's eyes as he reached out to profane her with the touch of his long, thin fingers; remembers, finally, the gentleness with which her former Professor settled his cloak on her thin, cold white shoulders. _Yes, it does_, she answers, finding the key to that prison.

"Would you like to go in, Miss Granger?"

"Yes," she says, "And it's Hermione."


	2. Tempus Fugit

Tempus Fugit

_by Verity_  
Madam Pomfrey walks by the private room, the light of her candle shining radiant through the doorway and then swallowed up by the great enveloping darkness of the hall. Ginny Weasley, sitting in the twilight stillness of that private room, thinks that her life has been narrowed down to such a light. Her days are spent chasing desperately down winding passageways after its flickering glitter, as she tries to escape the hungry, all-consuming blackness that wants the light too.

Her heart beats faster as she feels a sudden, irrational surge of fear run through her as the desire to follow that light's physical counterpart wars with her terror of leaving this small, impersonal private room. Sweat beads on her forehead. She digs her nails into the soft wool of the coverlet. Harry sleeps on.

It is several minutes before the panic recedes, her muscles relax, and her pounding heart returns to its usual pace, leaving her drenched in cold sweat and shivering. She barely has enough energy to drag herself off her cot and onto the foot of Harry's bed, where she curls around his feet. Eventually the shivering will leave her, too.

Madam Pomfrey has told her _Yes, the panic attacks will lessen, over time,_ and Ginny believes this with all her heart, though it's little help in the here-and-now. Madam Pomfrey knows her secret; Madam Pomfrey understands why she's here; and Madam Pomfrey is the one who has made possible this cot, and the little bathroom off to the left. Ginny will not leave this room for the world now for her world has been reduced to her lone light, dancing in the dark, and here he is, pale and sleeping; the sort of sleep that comes out of the end of a wand and doesn't go away for a long, long time. She will not leave this room even to visit her brother. 

Of course, Hermione knows her secret too, and understands far better than even Madam Pomfrey can. _I hope she wins,_ Ginny thinks tiredly, for the hollowness in her brother's friend's eyes is the kind that comes from a war with her internal demons. It is a hollowness she herself knows all too well.

She hugs Harry's feet, and closes her eyes, walking back in her mind into her memories as Arabella taught her to do in her months in prison - in Voldemort's fortress in the mountains of Albania, where strange men probed her mind and body for information she never had. She walks past these gray days in her mind, down another road. Two months ago - _Harry, freedom, sunlight_; the green grass beneath them.

"Oh, Harry" she sighs, remembering the Ginny of two months before, those two weeks before Harry's attack a lost Ginny, shattered inside and he'd made her whole again. Walked the roads in her mind with her and led her out of the gray days into green ones, sweet green like summer grass crunching beneath her feet.

And taught her that her body no longer was the enemy. A lesson she'd thought she could never learn, after

She smiles and drifts off to sleep for a few minutes.

When she wakes again, Madam Pomfrey is standing over her, a warm cup of chamomile tea in hand.

"How do you know?" she askes the nurse, who smiles gently.

"I just do, dear. Was it a very bad one?"

"There have been worse," Ginny says, and sets to drinking her tea. It sends lovely warm tendrils all over her body, and she sighs happily, not even protesting when Madam Pomfrey hands her a small plate of food as well. The nurse watches her eat with an approving eye.

"Now, you'll keep that all down now, won't you?" Madam Pomfrey says in a manner that makes the question both a firm statement and a kind enquiry.

She nods. "It's not so bad now. Have you told my parents yet?" she asks, her appetite gone.

"Yes." Madam Pomfrey smiles again, though weakly. "Cheer up, dear. They're very happy for you. They don't quite understand your decisions, but they haven't been where you've been."

"What do _you_ think of me?" Ginny snaps, though she feels rather bad about doing so. Inwardly, she asks herself, _What will **Harry** think of me?_

"I think that you're a very different woman then the little girl who walked into that store with Arabella Figg in December, dear, and it may take some time for them to understand. Harry will. Harry will be happy. Don't you worry now, dear. Are you crying? Oh, _Ginny_"

She weeps openly, clean tears like diamonds rolling down her cheeks, and Madam Pomfrey rocks her like a little child, whispering soothing little things in her ear. All she is thinking of is of Harry and if he never wakes up, will she and their daughter still be waiting in this room?

She knows with absolute certainty that if that flickering glitter goes out, nothing can drag her back from the claws of that terrible darkness


	3. Hands Entwined

**Hands Entwined**

_by Verity_

Somehow, they end up in his sitting room, though later Hermione is never sure quite how – for the only thing in her mind is the gentle pressure of his fingers entwined in hers. She is surprised to discover that she trusts him.

"Why?" she asks him once they're in his sitting room, a fire lit in the grate.

Severus knows what she's speaking of. "I knew you were bright – always knew that, but never… thought much more of you. You were always with Potter and Weasley – I though they'd made a lackey of you, using you for their own ends… I was wrong," he adds. "When you went in there – by yourself – after they had fallen – I had never seen that side of you. And when you came out, cover in blood, drenched in it, with that hideous, empty triumph in your eyes, like some vengeful warrior goddess… I thought you were dying, and I knew that if you died, I would. I couldn't understand why. Then."

She smiles, sitting down on the imperious-looking but surprisingly comfortable couch to lean her head against his shoulder. "I always understood," she says quietly, "I only tried to stop myself from comprehending."

With one long finger, Severus tilts her head up to his, brushing her lips slightly with his in a manner than leaves her breathless. After what seems light years but is probably only a moment, he kisses her in earnest, a kiss that is very different from the grave-and-almost-chaste one they shared in the Astronomy Tower, and Hermione wanders away in her mind… to some space that is still untainted, that has yet to be defiled by the ravages of humanity, or of a lack thereof…

When he finally pulls away, her cheeks are flushed, and she feels a sudden urge to murmur _No, no, don't stop, please…_ into his ear. Her own recklessness frightens her.

"Would you stay here?" Severus asks her.

"What?"

"As a professor, I mean," he explains, slightly flustered. "Minerva was meant to tell you, but I don't think she'll mind that I – will you?"

"Of course," she answers, surprised but equally delighted. It is then that it comes to her, what he is offering – a chance to get to know him truly, a chance to make something more of this than stolen kisses in the night, a chance… that she will gladly take. "Thank you." She looks into his eyes until he nods, understanding, and perhaps a little bit relieved.

"You're welcome."

The night's events and the fact that she hasn't had a decent night's sleep in weeks are beginning to take their toll on her, and she leans back into the comforting warm of arms, her head against his chest; she sighs a tired, happy little sigh. The soothing, rhythmic beat of his heart lulls her to a dreamless sleep as he strokes her hair.

She wakes as the sun rises, with Severus still asleep next to her. The one window in the room, close to the ceiling, lets in a river of dusky morning light. The fire, though almost guttered out by now, is still bright in the fireplace.

Unexpectedly, Dumbledore's head appears there amidst the flames a few minutes later.

"Ah, Miss Granger, I had rather thought I might find you here," he says, as though it is the most natural thing in the world for her to be sleeping in the Potions master's quarters.

Hermione nods, letting a small smile play on her lips. Dumbledore's eyes twinkle.

"I suppose you've decided to stay on as part of the faculty…?"

"Of course," she says, "I'm honored."

"But that is not what I meant to speak to you about. Your friend Harry has awakened." The Headmaster smiles, a wide, joyous smile.

She lets out an involuntary cry, which to her dismay wakens Severus.

"Hmm?" he exclaims groggily, tightening his arms around her protectively.

"It is only I, Severus," Dumbledore says reassuringly. "Harry Potter has returned from his sleep, thanks to the draught you've been preparing. That is all." With that, the fire in the grate suddenly succumbs to a lack of fuel and extinguishes itself.

_I will not burst into tears. I will not burst into tears,_ Hermione thinks, and oddly, she's rather unsure why she wants to do so. Severus, who is slightly more awake by this point, sighs, so she squeezes his hand as a gesture of comfort.

"You don't have to take care of him anymore," she tells him.

He laughs. "True. True."

She stands up, straightening her dress, and runs her fingers through her hair. "Let's go. Together."

Severus smiles up at her, takes her hand in his, and strangely, she feels more together than she's ever been.

_Thanks goes to all my reviewers: Chrissy (ah, another reader of Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, I see), VenusDeMilo (and so I did), Bellemaine Chercoeur (how nice of you! And indeed, I rarely wander straight down the yellow brick road as I write… *wink* ), and Nikki (thanks so much! I've gotten terribly behind on your story and ought to catch up – are you on ffn?). _

_Also, thanks to Fier for sitting behind me in LMS and reading all of it. *grin* Now, I want to read more about Etari…._

Verity


End file.
